Island Nightmare

Warning!!! This covers some hard to scrap subject matter, it may be upsetting.

I woke up from a nightmare this morning. It was awful. In my nightmare my late husband was alive, and telling me that he faked his suicide ... I have typed so much more several times but really I have a blog that's for my own therapy and really where the rest of that goes, but there is stuff in the journalling that talks about the dream so I wanted to put it in perspective for you. 

This layout is made using an awesome Rebekah Meier Stencil put out by the Crafter's Workshop called Gothic Romance. I picked it up at my LSS Scrapbooks-Plus. I think I'm going to be using it more... I really like it! I used another Stencil on some book paper for the butterflies. That was the Specimens Stencil also by Rebekah Meier for Crafter's Workshop. I used the Classic Butterfly punch from Martha Stewart to punch out the butterfly shapes. The hearts were made by scraping some Graphite colored Ferro with a pallete Knife (a credit card works great also). The stained glass window I made with an old bottle of Glimmer Glam in Lady Bug. The title stickers came from The Recorded Set from Allison Kreft for Webster's Pages. That Stamp is from Tim Holtz and the Steampunk cling stamp set. 

I dripped some Heidi Swapp Gold Lame' Colorshine Mist and some Studio Blue Art Anthology Mist over for some final touches. 

The journalling is very VERY stream of conscious towards the end. In the beginning I was just rehashing the most upsetting things about my dream that wouldn't get out of my mind. Sometimes all you need to do is write it out. JUST so you know, I have seen a therapist in the past for all of this grief stuff and as my own continuing therapy, sometimes you just gotta get it out, in my case... on some paper. And I don't mind sharing. Maybe you need to get it out too. I could have done this on a smaller scale, but I like working 12x12. I could have written this down and painted over it, but that's not what I do. I may never look at this again, but it will have a home in my scrapbook. I've dated it like I do my other layouts. This is how I deal with some of the harder things in my life. It works for me. Thanks for looking. I hope it helps or inspires you as well.

I've taken a couple of Stencil and Stamping classes lately... Most notably the mixed media bootcamp at Scrapbooks Plus. BUT I've taken several classes from May Flaum and it's really inspired me to actually USE the stencils I have bought and then to STAMP on my layouts so I get more use from my stamps.